Need a Receipt On Taxes? The Federal Tax Receipt 642
ndogg writes "The White House has opened up a tool that lets you see where your tax dollars are being spent. I put my numbers in and it showed that a little over a quarter goes towards defense and military spending (I'm not sure I'm getting my money's worth on that one), and a little under a quarter for health care." I'm sure readers (and think tanks of various stripes) will have some alternative narratives, too. For readers elsewhere; it's tax season here in the US.
I like paying taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
...with them I buy civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
But mostly bombs.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I'm not a fan of the defense spending, but looking at the rest of the money I'm pretty content with where it went. I'd like a bit more to STEM and a bit less to corn, but then I am an engineering grad student; were I a corn farmer I might feel differently:)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I'm not a fan of the defense spending, but looking at the rest of the money I'm pretty content with where it went. I'd like a bit more to STEM and a bit less to corn, but then I am an engineering grad student; were I a corn farmer I might feel differently:)
Were you a corn farmer you should recuse yourself from the issue, at least in any official capacity.
Re: (Score:3)
Why does it matter if it went to a large corporation or a small farmer? In my opinion the large scale operations are likely to be more efficient so we're getting more output per subsidy dollar.
Not that I believe farmers need subsidies to begin with, particularly for ethanol.
Re: (Score:3)
Do even the smallest amount of research on food in America and you'll realize that these "subsidies" are just regulatory money laundering for companies like Monsanto. The subsidies suppress the price of commodity crops below the cost of production, the farmers sell at what would be a loss without the subsidies (and buy their seed stock, equipment, etc. at prices they now can't afford without the subsidies), and everyone who sells seed, sells fertilizer or buys grain profits wildly at the expense of these su
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You are welcome to pay more. Here's how (Score:4, Insightful)
You, and anyone else who likes paying taxes, are welcome to pay more. Here's the page that tells you how [treas.gov].
If you want to advocate for higher taxes, start by going to that page, following the instructions, and sending the government a check. Then come back and talk to us about paying higher taxes.
Re:You are welcome to pay more. Here's how (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, all you Amish farmers can STFU about barn-raising until I see Amos over there hoist one up by himself.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:You are welcome to pay more. Here's how (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a completely illogical argument because individual actions cannot solve collective problems. Installing a catalytic converter on your own car won't improve the air you breathe in the slightest, whereas requiring everybody to do so (including yourself) causes a huge improvement. The two are not the same, so equating them doesn't work.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Please, enlighten the world, what in your estimation constitutes a 'reasonable amount'? Please.
Should it be percentage of their total wealth?
Should it be percentage of their earnings?
Is, say, 49% good enough?
Is it supposed to be 79%?
Is it 99%?
Do you know how much you pay today if you earn more than 500Kin Connecticut today? With 35% federal, 6.5% state (and the governor wants to push it up by a few points), FICA is really irrelevant then, because it's capped at first 100K, but 2.9% Medicare tax is applied o
Re:You are welcome to pay more. Here's how (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know how much you pay today if you earn more than 500Kin Connecticut today? With 35% federal, 6.5% state (and the governor wants to push it up by a few points), FICA is really irrelevant then, because it's capped at first 100K, but 2.9% Medicare tax is applied on the ENTIRE amount. This is only the income taxes, can you do the addition?
The problem is it's not entirely additive. That 35% number you quote for federal is only for the amount above $380k (when the 35% bracket kicks in). People often quote the highest rate as if that's the total tax for the entire amount. This often comes up when people talk about taxes 50 years ago at 90% tax rates. The problem with this is that taxes are progressive so quoting the highest rate is misleading.
If you want to talk about taxes due, you should be calculating the effective tax rate, not the top tax rate. On $500k it's about 29% with no deductions (which everyone gets). Start there and your point would have more weight.
Re: (Score:3)
GE, as in 'Government Electric'? :)
I already made my point clear - I am against government owning any assets, printing money, borrowing, taxing income, subsidizing any businesses or individuals, regulating any businesses and basically doing anything beyond minimum military and justice system (and I am now convinced they can't do that right either.)
As to having the top rate at over 90% (I believe it was 94% at some point), that does not change this simple fact: the actual effective taxes collected have alway
Re: (Score:3)
Of course, the fact is they already do. So, exactly what do you consider a "reasonable" amount?
Re: (Score:3)
So, you would like the top 1% to pay over 35% of all federal income tax collected? Or maybe you think the top 5% should pay over 50% of all federal income tax collected?
Of course, the fact is they already do.
Of course they do. The income tax is specifically designed for that purpose, which is why it is always singled out by right wing propaganda interests.
So, exactly what do you consider a "reasonable" amount?
A percentage high enough to ensure that you don't get a run away wealth distribution which eventually destroys the economy. While it is difficult to say exactly, historical evidence seems to indicate that 70% top margin income taxes with around 50% capital gains tax accomplishes that decently.
US taxes are designed to punish the responsible (Score:3, Informative)
I don't like paying taxes, because I don't like paying for everyone else's unearned security. Out of my own pocket, I have saved a six months emergency fund in the bank that could sustain my family for six months should I lose my job. But apparently I'm the only one left who actually saves for a rainy day, because all my medicare taxes go to medicare, and then on top of that an additional 24.3% of my general taxes go to healthcare (again, much of that amount medicare and medicaid), another 21.9% goes to job
Re:US taxes are designed to punish the responsible (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's imagine a world where you don't pay for the "unearned security" of others. The kid next door, through no fault of his own, has irresponsible parents. Maybe he gets knocked around. He certainly can't afford college. He tries to get a job, but the antics of the super-rich (in their efforts to become double-ultra-super-rich) have sent a lot of them overseas. He has no access to food or medicine or shelter, because you're too greedy to toss some money his way.
So he breaks into your home, robs, and murders you.
Taxes are what the rich people pay in exchange for the poor letting them continue to be rich. Doesn't seem fair? Tough shit. Life isn't fair. Just ask that starving kid next door.
Re:US taxes are designed to punish the responsible (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Funny how the anti-tax people only state that life isn't fair when they're asked to feel sympathy for the kid born to poor parents, through no fault of their own. But ask them to pay taxes and all of a sudden they feel like we should be in some fairy-tale flat-tax (or no tax) world.
What I like to ask the wealthy whiners is; if you're getting treated so unfairly while these freeloading, poor, sub-human, cradle-to-grave ghetto-dwellers are living the high-life off of your tax dollars, you should be happy to trade places, right? Right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ha! As if you "earned" anything you have. Plenty of people throughout history would have done just as well as you in your position, perhaps better, but were born in Britain to lowly parents in 1150 and lived and died as serfs. You're not a serf based on pure luck, but you want to pretend that you have control in this universe so you invent this fiction where you earned everything, which necessarily means that people who don't have it therefore did not earn it; it's logically consistent, but it's based on
Re:US taxes are designed to punish the responsible (Score:4, Informative)
Some of those social programs are actually designed to avoid extreme misery to fellow human beings, because you know, after all we are all humans. You might feel mighty and strong now, but I would like to see that you speak with that same tone when you are old, become disabled or sick somehow. Individuality is good but you should change that mentality of not wanting to give anything to help others. It's part of helping your nation helping those who cannot help themselves.
Re:US taxes are designed to punish the responsible (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how much you budgeted for those six months, but one major medical emergency while not covered by health insurance would probably wipe out the majority of those savings.
Re: (Score:3)
Your "F D R" is imaginary. Republicans, by lying us into the Iraq War alone, 1. seriously damaged the Constitution; 2. Killed hundreds of thousands of people; 3. Expanded government more than ever; 4. Evaded responsibility for one of the most damaging and expensive crimes of all time. Then there's a long list of other recent violations. And an even longer list of older violations.
You might be a Frederick Douglass something, but if you have any or all of those values then you're as much a "Republican" as you
Re: (Score:3)
...with them I buy civilization.
Or rather, other people buy it for you. And they're rather impulsive shoppers. (Not very thrifty either.)
At least they kinda sorta vaguely listen to you, though. People in totalitarian regimes pay taxes too, and I'm not sure it buys them very good civilization at all.
Re: (Score:3)
Realistically it does require taxes. By the time you grow large enough to not be making all decisions jointly you're going to need people dedicated to providing various civil services. At that point you need taxes, it might not be in the form of money, but somebody has to cover the costs of managing a region.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It, sometimes, surprises me, how unimaginative people can be.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't take any issue with fire service being provided by governments, I do have to disagree with your reasoning as to why a private system can't work. I believe it would be a fairly simple matter to handle via insurance. Try to get a mortgage without having fire insurance (usually as part of a larger package), it can't be done. Insurance providers base these rates on, among other things, the likelihood that your house will burn to the ground. I you don't have fire service, your insurance rate will be astronomical. How you actually buy fire service may vary, in some cases it may be bundled with insurance, or maybe it will be paid for by the bank (in exchange for a slightly higher interest rate).
As for mandated anything being equivalent to a government program to provide the same service, it is not. Whenever a government provides a service, it becomes a monopoly in that area. A monopoly with the power to put you in jail if you refuse to pay for their service and to prevent you from offering a competing service.
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:4)
We tried that in New York City for over a hundred years. It didn't work. Property burned all over the place, people died all over the place. Though insurance corps did make a lot of money.
That's why we have a Fire Department funded and operated by the public. Which works.
I wish extreme privateers would at least look at what's already been proven to fail before going around talking like the mayor of Sim City could run someplace real.
Re: (Score:3)
Police services could be outsourced to private security firms easily enough, and conceivably for much cheaper than current state-run police organizations. A private security firm could take convicts for labor, in exchange for their police services. The security firm might even pay the local government for rights to the criminals they catch, depending on how profitable the back-end of that turns out to be. The courts, however, would necessarily be state-run with regular audits to check for corruption among t
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
In short: if it's profitable to catch criminals, the private police would farm them. Like any other company, if they get paid for X, then well, you'll get plenty of X.
Re: (Score:3)
I watch movies like "Death Race" or "The Longest Yard" and wonder if convict shuffling and selection happens like that. If we gave the prison system to private firms i'm sure if it doesnt happen now it would quickly become the norm. Prison would no longer be about rehabilitation and reintroduction to society(HA! I chuckled too....) Instead we'd see even more selective apprehension than goes on now. "Hm.....this convict could be useful to us"
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The military. You really don't want to live in a country with lots of tanks around that are loyal to the highest bidder.
Re:I like paying taxes (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Bullshit. Name a single government service that can't be managed by the private market.
Can't and shouldn't are two different things. Changing the word taxes to fees and government to large corporations is just semantics. At that point it comes down to how you want things to operate. Do you want to elect 'leaders' or create them based on market dominance. Worse and what's already happening is you reintroduce a royal class since wealth can be passed from one generation to the next as opposed to 'earning' it each election cycle.
Fundamentalist for the free market need look no further than t
Re: (Score:3)
And the USA barely qualifies as civilized.
Many of the world's best institutions of higher education would beg to differ.
The good ol' U.S. of A has some serious issues, to be sure. But to call it "barely civilized" is just stupid.
Re: (Score:3)
Many of the world's best institutions of higher education would beg to differ..
Civilisation is measured by how well the worst off have it, not the best off
Re: (Score:2)
*Your local laws may vary.
Re: (Score:2)
*Your local laws may vary.
Damn straight! [canorml.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not that the Feds aren't going broke on their own... they have been. But it's not the same thing.
Re: (Score:3)
You just did, and nobody in the government cares.
Re: (Score:2)
$666 (Score:2)
$666.00 in net interest for me, LOL. That is more than the amount of my taxes spent on Science/Tech + ICE + Natural Resources + Agriculture.
I also seem to be buying lots of bullets, or something else that goes BOOM!
"Alternative Narratives"? (Score:2)
Let me guess, this guy has some sort of political axe to grind and he is looking for way to try to justify tax cuts in areas he doesn't like.
FACTS ARE FACTS, these are numbers where money is going and where they are spent. While he can say that "welfare" should be renamed "money for cadillac queens" or that the "defense department" should be renamed "military industrial complex" it doesn't change where the money is going or what is is actually being spent for.
(Not unless you're Jon Kyl and claim on the sen
Re:"Alternative Narratives"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the difference is that proving for the national defense is in the Constitution. Welfare and Planned Parenthood are not. At least with NASA, you can say it has military applications. Same with the Interstate system. But the federal government has no Constitutional right to fund Planned Parenthood, ACORN, GE, GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or any of the thousands of other programs that get funded because the government is so big that no one will notice.
The government has very few functions. Those need to be funded. The rest needs to be funded by the states... or not.
Re:"Alternative Narratives"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The preamble of the United States constitution reads: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (emphasis added)
Article I, section 8 reinforces this general welfare statement by remarking: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." (more emphasis added).
Insofar as Planned Parenthood encourages the development of families that are planned and not just accidents, ACORN encourages get out the vote projects to enhance American democracy, General Electric, General Motors, and Chrysler provide gainful employment for Americans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide opportunities for home ownership, and the like, I think you reasonably have to say the goal is to provide for the general welfare.
You and I are welcome to disagree over whether those are the best ways to promote the general welfare (and in many cases, though not all, I suspect we would be in agreement, despite this post). However, the constitution is pretty clear that the US government has a general broad right to promote the general welfare in the United States.
I should also like to add, one of the primary advocates of the United States Constitution during the period leading up to its ratification was Alexander Hamilton, who was originally in favor of setting up a fairly powerful monarch. He lost out on the the first draft of the Constitution -- the Articles of Confederation -- which provided for a much more limited government. However, we threw that in the toilet and opted for the Constitution, which was designed to strengthen and centralize the Federal government's power, not really limit it (though it does have its own limitations laid out in the Bill of Rights).
Look, I'm pretty sympathetic to the Jeffersonian minimalist government ideal. But the Constitution isn't a Jeffersonian document. It's a Hamiltonian and Madisonian one, and those guys were more for centralized power than the original founders were. Insofar as that's the government we got, that's the government we got.
Re: (Score:3)
I love how American political dialogue is strictly limited to the exegesis of a very old document. How bizarre.
Re: (Score:3)
Note that the situation is not entirely different th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Alternative Narratives"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
By the way, the 16th amendment is very, very clear: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
When the Supreme Court said the 16th amendment created no new abil
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Now it's true with numbers released by planned parenthood itself that well over 90% of prenatal services at planned parenthood are abortions
[Citation needed]. These numbers released by Planned Parenthood itself [plannedparenthood.org] say otherwise.
Priorities (Score:2, Interesting)
"NSF and research" = "Railroad retirement and income security"
"Weapon R&D" = 17x"NSF and research"
Something is seriously wrong with our priorities.
Re: (Score:2)
"War on Drugs" (Score:5, Insightful)
As a tax payer, I'm pissed at this stupid ass "war". You want to reduce spending and increase revenues? Legalize and tax marijuana.
Re: (Score:3)
As a tax payer, I'm pissed at this stupid ass "war". You want to reduce spending and increase revenues? Legalize and tax marijuana.
Yeah, but then the hippies will have won!
Re:"War on Drugs" (Score:4, Interesting)
The death and taxes site [wallstats.com] has a much better breakdown of how the money is spent, IMO. You can find the Drug Enforcement Agent (under the department of Justice) spends about 2 billion per year.
Taxes are a bargain (Score:4, Insightful)
This will be a supremely unpopular stance among a large section here - but taxes are one of the best bargains in any marketplace.
Taxes buy infrastructure. The kind of infrastructure that allows us all to live as kings used to, and more. The kind of infrastructure without which the work of countless geniuses of all stripes would be impossible. The kind of tools and infrastructure that raises the average lifespan across the world to many times what it was before taxes were common.
Taxes buy culture. Education systems may not be ideal - but they advance the average human state in ways that it is hard to quantify in everyday terms. Simply being able to have conversations and do business across large nations like the US is one small bit. A limited but important bit of shared history, and the seeds of knowledge that sprout in countless little ways. They can certainly always be better - but the return is enormous on what we have so far, just by allowing what we have.
From tools, to access to shared resources, to even the ability to shape the system you live in - taxes buy a lot more than a simple minarchy would allow.
Taxes are the resources of the people paying for the shared needs of the people. They are in effect, allowing everyone to take advantage of economies of scale when used correctly (see: most sane nations' use of healthcare money), and often stand as an irreplaceable method of getting shared needs met.
What's surprising is how often people will directly vote to have the rich pay less taxes, and the poor pay more - that part never made sense to me, given how much shared sacrifice already goes into providing people with the tools to become rich - it just doesn't seem like they need more protection all the time.
But that's part of taxes also - they will be spent as the people's representatives allow them to be spent. Keep electing people and allowing them to be bribed constantly with no checks in place to stop the rising corruption on all sides, and you will keep getting taxes wasted - wasted by the system you allow to grow more stagnant.
Taxes aren't perfect - but they are still a bargain compared to warlords and tycoons ruling everything in the vacuum of a world without any collective funding system.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Taxes are a bargain (Score:5, Insightful)
A small fraction goes to "infrastructure". Some of that actually is "a bargain".
Most of the rest is directly or indirectly transferred to people who have more political power than you.
Re: (Score:3)
You forgot - taxes buy death for brown people so we can steal the black goo beneath their feet.
Re:Taxes are a bargain (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes buy infrastructure.
- taxes kill infrastructure.
FDR taxed the airlines in order to build the unprofitable and inefficient system of roads while taking apart the existing system of privately owned profitable and efficient rail. This was a massive subsidy to the auto-industry, it caused massive sub-urban sprawl, which is unmaintainable without huge subsidies. It cause much more pollution that rail ever could. It caused much more traffic and waste of peoples' lives than if cities were much less spread around and instead had more population density in smaller area. It killed the industry for profitable public transport (well, it was part of the kill, there are many other parts, all have government hands in it).
Of-course today Obama wants to build rail. Of-course USA has no money for it, but they figure they'll print it/borrow from Chinese. It will be massively expensive and inefficient, because the plan is to use all USA parts, which don't actually exist, so it can't be profitable without huge subsidies because nobody would be able to buy the tickets without huge subsidies. I don't think Obama actually will do this, USA is literally out of investment capital and credit, but that was the plan anyway.
Taxes buy culture.
- so without taxes there is no culture? You are talking about education for some reason there, but education is a function of the market, which requires education if it is a productive market. USA used to be a productive market in 19 century, beginning of the 20 century and past WWII, when it had a monopoly on production. It was the industrialization and manufacturing that pushed for more education, not gov't in any way. Education was efficient and it made sense as an investment. It was also quite cheap. All until government money poured in, made the system very expensive and inefficient and destroyed quality in the process. Now the market in USA does not require anywhere near as much education as there are dollars allocated for all the government subsidized schools and programs and loans, there is a huge bubble in education prices, there is a huge drop in quality, and all this is bought with more money than any other country spends per capita (same as with gov't ran health care in USA, same problems - huge costs and low quality, all thanks to government money in it.)
As to 'culture', the only 'culture' that taxes buy is culture of people who are unwilling to do anything and instead expect to be taken care of by the government - this is bread and circuses culture.
From tools, to access to shared resources, to even the ability to shape the system you live in - taxes buy a lot more than a simple minarchy would allow.
- all of this assumes that there is a need for any of those things and that by taxing income the government does not displace other types of investment that people would have made with their money, that wouldn't have given them more of what they actually needed, rather than something, government believes they need. This point has no value at all.
Taxes are the resources of the people paying for the shared needs of the people.
- yet when the USA was agreed upon by the separate States, the agreement was on a very very very tiny federal government that would do very very very little, would only take care of minimum military for protection and a justice system. What are the "shared needs" of people in New York and in Alaska exactly? How is a government bureaucratic system deciding these?
Also gov't is terrible at owning 'shared resources'. It really should not own any assets. It's terrible at being an 'owner', because as a collective, it has no sense of ownership.
That's why it's so terrible at actually protecting the 'shared resources'. The Guelph of Mexico is a good example - oil is spilled constantly, yet the gov't is a system that allowed 10 million dollar cap on the liability of the companies on d
Re: (Score:3)
You remind me of the time cube guy. You write a lot, but don't say much. What you do say has no substance or foundation in reality. You may read, but you do not comprehend.
Had you been reading and comprehending sound practical statements from fellow /.'ers and from history you would not produce the drivel written above. There are too many points to breakdown, but I'll take one that offended me the most,
Government is a necessary evil, but it is an evil, do not forget it. It is an evil,
Governments are neither good nor evil. They are merely the extension of what the populous choose for
Re: (Score:3)
I don't particularly care about your comment, it started with an ad-hominem from the get-go, but I stand by my assertion that government is inherently and by the very definition and nature of itself an evil instrument, as it completely depends on its ability to HURT an individual in more ways than one through basically physical threat.
If the entire existence of a system is based on a threat that there will be physical violence (be it fines, jail or death), then I get to call that system evil on the very fac
Re: (Score:3)
It is very simple - the system is about bread and circuses and it is ran by government departments, including department of education and all of this is set up to promote the kind of thinking that leads to the comments left by the owner of the thread.
BTW, he started his comment with a preamble how his comment will be extremely unpopular, but this is just posturing. In reality his thought processes are very common and prevailing in the bread and circuses society that has been cultivated since the ultimate bl
Re: (Score:3)
Regardless of you trying to make it personal, where it clearly does not belong, because I am not in North America anymore, haven't been in about 1.5 years, you are completely avoiding the point that I made, that the public roads built with tax money should never have existed, as they are unprofitable, they are a subsidy to industries, they are unmaintainable without constant public subsidy (which is not going to last), they are causing massive unmaintainable suburban sprawl, they killed the profitable indus
Re: (Score:3)
When you say: people prefer - how the hell do you know that?
Because it's true. People like freedom. Try using air/rail to travel coast to coast, stopping at 15 landmarks along the way. Try using air/rail to visit relatives that live 2 hours away. Try using air/rail to pack up and move cross country. There's a ton of stuff that people love to do that you can't do nearly as easily (if at all) by air/rail. Yeah, if you are traveling often on business trips, or trying to take a week vacation in LA when you live in NYC, then people definitely love air for that. I'm not s
Re:Taxes are a bargain (Score:5, Insightful)
Insightful? Really?
"Government is a bureaucracy. By definition, government produces exactly nothing. It takes from others in order to perform its functions."
You know I find irritating? Idiots who claim that our government produces nothing. Go live in a third world country for a year, without all those comfortable amenities you have that you don't even think about. If you manage to survive without getting killed or debilitatingly sick, then come on back and tell us about how our government produces nothing. It either produces or facilitates everything you take for granted in your happy, comfortable, privileged little life.
"And the sad fact is, government, historically, has been woefully inefficient at ANY of the functions it has undertaken. There may have been a few exceptions, in a few places, a few times, but in the vast majority of cases that is the simple truth."
That is just plain bullshit. If governments were woefully inefficient at everything they did then major empires lasting centuries would not have been possible. Nor would we have major countries today that have been around for 500 years or more. Governments exist because the majority of the population view them as beneficial. Those that aren't beneficial get to experience uprising, and being replaced by something that is.
"You cannot even say -- today -- that taxes are a "bargain compared to warlords and tycoons ruling everything" because, today, you have those anyway and you are still paying outrageous taxes."
Yes, he can say that. Do you have any idea what a real warlord is? A real warlord will come up to you and cut your fucking head off just because he feels like it. Then he'll rape your wife/daughters and then order his men to lock them in their house and burn it to the ground. Your sons will either be put in a camp to become future members of his army or killed right along with them. A warlord will use a jeep mounted machine gun and run down dozens of fleeing people for not paying him a tribute. A warlord will slaughter thousands and dump them into mass graves to keep or solidify his grip on power. THAT'S what a warlord is.
Get some fucking perspective. Your privileged, pampered ass has NO CLUE about just how good you have it. If you truly and honestly believe government and taxes are useless and provide nothing, there are plenty of places you can go where you can enjoy a tax free existence and a remarkably short life span.
Re:Taxes are a bargain (Score:5, Funny)
But then how would he find time to look brooding and deep at the corner coffee shop while reading Ayn Rand novels? Your plan just doesn't make any SENSE, man!
Re: (Score:3)
"I don't much care how irritating you find the truth to be. It's sad, but not my fault."
[citation needed]
"Really? How often did The People have much choice in whether they would support said governments? Without an outright war, that is? That's the only way you'd be able to say they were efficient, and since they didn't, you can't."
Quite often actually. And that has nothing to do with your ludicrous claim that governments produce nothing and are inefficient at everything.
"Hmmmm... or maybe like Obama, who u
Re: (Score:3)
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the [U.S.] nation." -- Barack Obama, campaign speech, December 20, 2007
Hmmm... I'm wrong? Then Obama -- the "Constitutional Scholar" -- was wrong, too?
"You put up a lot of truly idiotic, short-sighted, wrong, naive and ignorant opinions, but that one takes the cake - because it is so patently wrong, and based 100% on team colors."
When I know the evidence is on my side, I don't much care whether you think it's idiotic, or that it's just opinion.
All defense and health care (Score:3)
The vast majority for me is defense and health care. Even though I am exempt from medicare taxes, 25% goes to that category. Anyone who thinks we don't need health care reform is crazy!
Second, if we stop funding health care people die. If we stop funding defense, what happens? Seriously. If the defense budget is cut in half, in what ways is my life or way of life threatened? I can intellectually measure the value ofnthe rest of my tax dollars in the other categories, but, for defense, it's hard to imagine what I get after spending as much per capita as, say, Japan, on defense.
Re:All defense and health care (Score:4)
If we stop funding defense, what happens?
I agree that defense spending should be cut, but I also wonder if we (the US) need to restructure what we call "defense." For example, I think a lot of defense-related research is a Good Thing (ARPANET [wikipedia.org] comes to mind). My guess is the research would be the first to go, which could royally screw us down the road.
It does seem to me that cutting the military operations budget could be a good thing, but I'm really not qualified to speak on that I guess...
Re:All defense and health care (Score:5, Informative)
What seems incredible to me is you're paying more tax for healthcare than me, yet in my country I get healthcare that is free at the point of use and don't need health insurance at all.
I think I rather like my (pejoratively termed by right wingers in the US) "socialist health care system". It's certainly way cheaper on my tax take and neither I nor my employer don't have to pay for insurance on top of that.
I therefore have to agree 100%: your health care system sounds as if it needs reform.
4.8% on education, 1.2% science, 30% on military (Score:5, Informative)
If we cut 90%, we'd be the world's second-highest spender.
If we cut back 95%, we'd be 10th.
Contributions on Billionaires' $1-a-Year Salaries (Score:2)
That's funny - the White House tool indicates that those much-praised $1-a-Year Salary Billionaire CEO's [slashdot.org] - Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, etc. - aren't contributing to any of the programs and services!
Re: (Score:3)
Deceptive page and many here fooled by it. (Score:3)
If you're not careful, like ndogg, you'll end up focusing on the percentages listed for each group paid for by the income tax (and not payroll taxes) and conclude (incorrectly) that 25% of taxes paid go to defense. Of course that's not true, but it's easy to be fooled by the page. Look again at the page. They only show percentages for those items paid for by income tax as a percentage of income tax. If one includes social security spending and medicare spending, then military as a percentage of total taxes is much smaller. You're not supposed to pay attention to social security spending and medicare spending.
That page is meant to fool you.
Want's worse -- it's your own government trying to fool you.
Re: (Score:3)
The fact is that all the budget is discretionary. Congress just divides it up between those things they can get away with fiddling with and go home at night, from those things they think they'd get lynched for, if they cut.
The hell of it is that without exception, the latter are things that Congress never had any legal right or authority to spend money on, anyway.
As
"Health Care" (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
In other countries, you would pay the same, but you would get health care. That is the worst part.
And you're not getting health care (Score:5, Informative)
In other countries, a quarter of their taxes goes to health care, but then they actually get health care for that! It's very sad that in the US, you can pay just as much, yet that only covers old people and poor people and politicians.
I've lived in 3 countries -- UK, Canada, and USA -- and the health care in UK and Canada is a billion times better than in the US. The doctors here in the US spend about half their energy finding funding for whatever care they want to provide, and people here routinely walk around sick and with untreated wounds and diseases. Even people who "have insurance." And people who live on the Canadian or Mexican border cross the border to get health care or buy pharmaceuticals routinely. It's just amazingly sad.
Wrong -- only adds to 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government spends more than it earns, so for every dollar of tax you pay, the government spends something substantially more than one dollar, with the difference being borrowed and compounded until some future generation pays it back, or the debt (and everyone's savings) are eroded by printing more money and then paid back. To be accurate, the calculator should add to substantially more than 100%.
The fine line (Score:3)
Federal military and civilian employee retirement and disability 4.6%
This is listed under health care, but a major portion of it could be in the Military personnel salaries and benefits.
The line item for Veterans Benefits 4.1%
could also just as easily have been a sub-paragraph of the Military budget.
So if you wanted to read it differently, Health Care would be at 19.7% and Nation Defense would be at 35%
Now that's more like an American Government!
Re: (Score:3)
Also,I am not sure how publicly invading three other countries, and having "secret" bombing campaigns in several others, counts as defense.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
12% of My Income to the Medical Corps (Score:3)
I used the tax spending site. And I added my expenses on private medical insurance to my tax expenses on healthcare. That's 54% of my combined total tax and health insurance spending, and 12% of my income. If I include my employer's expenses on my health insurance (that could otherwise be paid directly to me), that's over 18% of my income. I am several years past the median life expectancy and I've collected as much in health insurance benefits over my lifetime as I pay in a year.
I know I'll be spending a lot more as I get older, especially for the last several years where I'm basically dying. I'd just rather spend that close to 20% of my income directly on Medicare in my taxes. Medicare costs less per care than private insurance. The insurance cartel's gouging and stingy approvals, plus its large profits, atop a mountain of waste, are sucking money from me that will never go to my health, or to anyone else's health other than the insurance corp's shareholders.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are working as hard as they can to destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and force all of our health expenses to funnel through the private insurance skimmer. The worst part of the Healthcare Reform they manipulated into a shadow of what was needed is what they are trying to convert the whole thing into.
Medicare for all. Like the rest of the civilized world. Or bust. Literally.
Re: (Score:2)
I hear that often enough, but I never hear how much it should cost to run a country of 310m people and preside over a spending of ~$13tn. I'm also not aware of any comparable organization in the world. The closest would probably be China or India, but they're in a very different situation than we are.
Re:Not getting money's worth on defense spending? (Score:4, Informative)
That's insane. Out of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the US constitution
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
You do realize that Defence isn't any more special than general welfare, right?
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean that it's not in the constitution. Considering that the constitution specifically authorizes the Federal Government to tax to pay for the general Welfare of the United States, I think it's pretty clear that the constitution grants the power.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Hamilton was in a very small minority in his thinking. Those who actually decided the principles that would go into the document thought quite differently, and stated so many times.
Hamilton thought the President should effectively be a king. Is that the kind of person you want to follow?
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation
Re:Not getting money's worth on defense spending? (Score:5, Informative)
I've never seen such pig ignorance.
The Supreme Court affirmed Hamilton's point of view both in Helvering vs Davis and Steward Machine Company vs Davis. The Supreme Court's view is that Congress is entitled to an expansive definition of "general welfare," and may seek to promote it through many means, including its prodigious taxing and spending power.
My pathetic, deluded friend, you should have learned this in middle school. What is going on in your screwed up country that so few understand their own laws and government? Granted, I did well in American history, but I still expect AMERICANS to know SOMETHING about it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." -- James Madison, letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
(Hint: there is a lot of sarca
Re:Not getting money's worth on defense spending? (Score:5, Informative)
Think for yourself. Research the original sources; don't just grab sound bites off fringe libertarian blogs or wherever you pasted that from t is 1:30 AM, so I am not going to teach you too much history, but be assured that the Hamiltonian view of the general welfare clause was pretty much operative from the beginning, from Washington's administration on. The Jefferson and Madison administrations don't change that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You would know that, if you had actually read your history.
Re: (Score:3)
More like the past 50 years. Al qeada was not a nation.